Azerbaijan, the Next Battleground between East and West

Jacques Richardson (The reviewer is a member of foresight's editorial board and a regular contributor.)

Foresight

ISSN: 1463-6689

Article publication date: 1 March 2006

117

Keywords

Citation

Richardson, J. (2006), "Azerbaijan, the Next Battleground between East and West", Foresight, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 78-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680610656200

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


This book appeared in Paris at the moment of parliamentary elections held in Azerbaijan, November 2005[1]. It was obviously written before the national elections that returned the sitting president (Ilham Aliyev) under election conditions described as from “irregular” to “totally falsified” by the regime's critics and experienced foreign observers. The author, a 50‐year former Russian ambassador who is an ethnic Azeri, remains a Russian citizen living in Russia.

Agaev's book is a bitter criticism of the government of Azerbaijan under Aliyev's leadership since 2003, when he succeeded his father. The author construes the official opposition in the land of his ancestors as no less corrupt, and demands a veering away of Azerbaijan from dictatorial governance to full democratic rule. Agaev condemns, furthermore, a large Armenian population at home – chiefly in the Nagorny‐Karabakh autonomous region – as the domestic troublemaker, and Iran as the main external adversary to the modernization of Azerbaijan. He believes that energy‐rich Azerbaijan must maintain friendly relations in future decades with both Russia and the USA, taking full advantage of its petroleum wealth abroad as well as at home. One notes, coincidentally, that a new oil pipeline intended to market the product abroad conspicuously avoids crossing Russian soil.

Azerbaijan is a small nation in the Caucasus region, once a satrapy of ancient Persia, with a population in 2006 of around 8 million. It is the world's first secular Muslim state, and has been so since it was declared the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan in May 1918 upon the break‐up of the Ottoman empire. It was absorbed into the newly‐founded USSR shortly afterwards. Azerbaijan finally separated from the Soviet Union in August 1991, and Baku remains its capital and largest city. Politically the country is oriented favorably towards the northern western industrial democracies.

The nearest neighbors are Russia to the north, Georgia and Armenia to the west. Azerbaijan is a country of nearly 89,000 square km, lying north of the Iranian border on the Caspian sea. With its profitable primary natural resource of petroleum, the surrounding Caspian region holds 5 percent of the world's oil reserves. Since September 2005 a consortium of western firms has been operating the $4 billion Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceylon (BTC) pipeline, providing a million barrels of oil daily – a true bonanza that President Aliyev's opponents claim has made him and his ministers wealthy. A leader of the Azadlig opposition, Gabil Guseyil, was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying that “our law‐based democracy” is “in practice, a semifeudal, clan‐based state, a mafia”.

What struck me about this book is its peculiarity in thrust and timing – a thesis written by an author who condemns Azerbaijan's present government yet cannot express support for the so‐called Azadlig bloc, a coalition of three parties resolutely antagonistic to the Aliyev dynasty. If author Agaev is not for the opposition, then whom does he sustain as future leaders of the Caucasian nation? The book's contents seem to be properly researched, yet presented with a somewhat sensationalist cast, not really supporting the volume's awesome title. For what purposes was the book written by a Russian‐educated Azeri and published by a small publishing house in (thus far) languages that are neither Azeri nor Russian? Curious.

Notes

Published simultaneously in French as L'Azerbaïdjan, prochain champ de bataille entre l'Orient et l'Occident.

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